Oppressive Light Selected Poems by Robert Walser

OPPRESSIVE LIGHT

#43 SELECTED POEMS BY ROBERT WALSER #43

Translated and Edited by Daniele Pantano

black lawrence press CONTENTS

Introduction by Carolyn Forché xi

From EARLY LYRICS (1897-1912)

From Poems (1909)

From Further Selections (1897-1905)

Trüber Nachbar | Gloomy Neighbor 62 Feierabend | Closing Time 64 Mutlos | Faint-Hearted 66 Trauerspiel | Tragedy 68

From POEMS WRITTEN IN BIEL (1919-1920)

Frühling (I) | Spring (I) 72 Oktober | October 76 Nach Zeichnungen von Daumier | Afer Drawings by Daumier 80

From POEMS WRITTEN IN BERNE (1924-1933)

Afterword 153 References 163 Acknowledgments 169 About the Author 171 About the Translator 171 Index of Titles and First Lines in English 173 Index of Titles and First Lines in German 177 For Nicole, Fiona, and Giacomo.

For James Reidel.

And for Tomas “T-Man” Daniel Leavines.

—DP INTRODUCTION

To paraphrase Musil’s famous aphorism regarding Reason, the path of Robert Walser’s poetry “is the path of a cloud” in the rarifed air of a solitary life, adrif in an evil century, moving with the lightness of an accomplished soul. One enters his language to be enveloped in gentle agonies, dark praise, rays of bright pleasure and the tumult of recognitions regarding selfood and the fog of self, an ich ohne ich. Tis lyric cloud forms at the beginning of his writing life, with the earliest poem “Im Bureau,” wherein the poet, as a “miserable clerk,” is “made humble,” his language foating across the moon, a “wound of night.” As a young man, Walser lef his birthplace of Biel/Bienne, Switzerland, for Stuttgart, Germany, where, having failed his frst audition as an actor, he resolved to become a poet, earning his living as a clerk moving from job to job before returning to Switzerland, on foot, to continue in clerical positions. Afer fulflling his military obligations, he entered the employ of a failed inventor, and then trained as a servant, working as a butler in a castle in Upper Silesia. In 1905, he moved to Berlin to join his brother, a painter of theater sets, and here, living frugally in rooming houses, he wrote his frst three masterful novels, as well as short stories, sketches, ‘dramolets’ and feuilletons popular in magazines and newspapers of the day. He was accepted in literary circles and admired by Franz Kafa, Robert Musil and also Walter Benjamin, who wrote that in Walser’s xii

OPPRESSIVE LIGHT

1 sentences, “the idea that stumbles around . . . is a thief, a vagabond 2 and a genius.” In these years, prose fowed fuently from his pen, in 3 a script that was nearly calligraphic in its execution. Te fâneur, the 4 servant, the poet and salaried clerk moved as characters through 5 his dreamscapes, anonymous and evanescent. His sentences seemed 6 to cascade and vanish like veils of falling water upon rock. Te late 7 W. G. Sebald thought that Walser shared Gogol’s secret of “utter 8 superfuity . . . the awful provisionality of their respective existences, 9 the prismatic mood swings, the sense of panic, the wonderfully 10 capricious humor steeped at the same time in blackest heartache, 11 the endless scraps of paper and, of course, the invention of a whole 12 populace of lost souls, a ceaseless masquerade for the purpose of 13 autobiographical mystifcation.” 14 Walser’s life swerves here, through a return to Switzerland, 15 military service, the loss of his father, a brother’s suicide, periods of 16 prodigious writing and self-disparagement, poverty and isolation, 17 and fnally the closing of his “little prose-piece workshop.” A 18 crippling cramp in his writing hand forced him then to invent what 19 he called “the pencil method,”—writing in pencil on paper scraps, 20 in a miniscule and, for years, indecipherable hand of “tiny, antlike 21 markings” that his friend, Carl Seelig, assumed was a secret code. 22 Te sequence is unclear to me, but it seems that afer periods 23 of drinking and depression, his sister urged him to enter a mental 24 sanatorium in Waldau, and although doctors couldn’t agree 25 on a diagnosis, fnally settling on schizophrenia, he would live 26 incarcerated in mental hospitals in Waldau and later Herisau for a 27 quarter of a century, until his death. He spent his days at menial tasks 28 such as sorting beans and making paper bags; he read magazines 29 and took long walks, especially at night. He declined a room of his 30 own, choosing to sleep in the asylum barracks. Although he showed 31 no outward signs of mental illness, he refused to live in the world 32 again, and when asked by a visitor about his writing, he famously 33 answered: “I’m not here to write, I’m here to be mad.” 34 Te later poems are dated from 1924 to 1933, spanning the years

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INTRODUCTION of his confnement. Te last of them had to have been written “from 1 the pencil area,” a provisional brouillon of light drafs that freed his 2 hand and didn’t at all resemble his past experience of sitting “for 3 hours bent over a single word that has to take the long slow route 4 from brain to paper.” Te penciled script allowed him, according 5 to J. M. Coetzee, “the purposeful, uninterrupted, yet dreamy hand 6 movement that had become indispensable to his creative mood.” In 7 the asylum, he never felt himself to be in a hurry. Te asylum walls 8 and also his long walks on the grounds and beyond aforded him 9 solitude, and in the barracks and wards, he found companionship 10 of the sort he could bear. “I would wish it on no one to be me,” he 11 wrote, “Only I am capable of bearing myself. To know so much, to 12 have seen so much, and/ To say nothing, just about nothing.” 13 Te late poems include “To Georg Trakl,” the Austrian poet who 14 would have been Walser’s contemporary, and with whom he shared 15 afnities, lyric and experiential, having to do with literary gifs and 16 mental fragility, who shared a sense of apartness on earth, and who 17 was also hospitalized (in Krakow) for a mental breakdown in the 18 afermath of attending to ninety wounded soldiers in Galicia whose 19 lives he could not save. Trakl’s friend, Ludwig von Ficker, attempted 20 to intercede on his behalf and also preserved his work, just as Walser’s 21 friend Carl Seelig would later do. Tey shared a radiant awareness of 22 nature, the brevity of conscious life, and the instability of selfood. 23 Of reading Trakl’s work, Walser wrote to the poet: “I found myself 24 in the chasm of reading,/ in the pursuit of your being’s beauty,” and 25 later, “I dedicate this speech, playfully, dreamlike/ to your genius.” 26 And in conclusion, “When I read your poems/ I feel as if/ I’m being 27 driven away by a magnifcent chaise.” 28 Troughout the poems, early and late, we fnd the vocation 29 announced, to which Walser would devote his life: the spiritual and 30 later corporeal work of vanishing from the world. Tis is everywhere 31 available in the lyrics: “Tey abandoned me, so I learned to forget 32 myself/ which allowed me to bathe in my inspired soul.” And later 33 in the same poem: “Because they didn’t want to know me, I became 34

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1 self-aware.” In another he is “enchanted/ by the idea that I’ve been 2 forgotten.” Of the place in which he has vanished, he writes “I 3 only know that it’s quiet here,/ stripped of all needs and doings,/ 4 here it feels good, here I can rest,/ for no time measures my time.” 5 With untold sufering behind him perhaps, in the interstices of his 6 recorded life, he seems to write his way toward a liminal state of 7 non-attachment and hovering, weightless acceptance: “Te world is 8 inside an hour,/ unaware, not needing anything,/ and, oh, I don’t 9 always know/ where it rests and sleeps, my world.” His world is 10 other-where, and he without it, and we emerge from reading his 11 lyric art as a cloud would disperse in raw light, with unexpected 12 clarity, having followed the poet’s footsteps to where he was found 13 on Christmas Day in 1956, lying in the snow, his eyes open, his heart 14 still, with snow on his shoulders and his soul loosed. 15 16 —Carolyn Forché 17 In “October” he advises us to be 18 glad, be gentle and kind/ and patient. 19 20 October, 2011 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34

xiv “I would wish it on no one to be me. Only I am capable of bearing myself. To know so much, to have seen so much, and To say nothing, just about nothing.”

—RW OPPRESSIVE LIGHT From EARLY LYRICS (1897-1912) From POEMS (1909) 4

1 2 3 4 5 6 IM BUREAU 7 8 9 10 Der Mond blickt zu uns hinein, 11 er sieht mich als armen Kommis 12 schmachten unter dem strengen Blick 13 meines Prinzipals. 14 Ich kratze verlegen am Hals. 15 Dauernden Lebenssonnenschein 16 kannte ich noch nie. 17 Mangel ist mein Geschick; 18 kratzen zu müssen am Hals 19 unter dem Blick des Prinzipals. 20 21 Der Mond ist die Wunde der Nacht, 22 Blutstropfen sind alle Sterne. 23 Ob ich dem blühenden Glück auch ferne, 24 ich bin dafür bescheiden gemacht. 25 Der Mond ist die Wunde der Nacht. 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34

4 5

1 2 3 4 5 IN THE OFFICE 6 7 8 9 The moon peers in on us. 10 He sees me as a miserable clerk 11 languishing under the strict gaze 12 of my boss. 13 Embarrassed, I scratch my neck. 14 I’ve never known 15 life’s lasting sunshine. 16 17 having to scratch my neck 18 under the boss’s gaze. 19 20 The moon is the wound of night. 21 Every star is a blood drop. 22 23 I’m made humble for it. 24 The moon is the wound of night. 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34

5 6

1 2 3 4 5 6 ABEND (I) 7 8 9 10 Schwarzgelb im Schnee vor mir leuchtet 11 ein Weg und geht unter Bäumen her. 12 Es ist Abend, und schwer 13 ist die Luft von Farben durchfeuchtet. 14 15 Die Bäume, unter denen ich gehe, 16 haben Äste wie Kinderhände; 17 18 unsäglich lieb, wenn ich stille stehe. 19 20 Ferne Gärten und Hecken 21 brennen in dunklem Wirrwarr, 22 und der glühende Himmel sieht angststarr, 23 wie die Kinderhände sich strecken. 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34

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1 2 3 4 5 EVENING (I) 6 7 8 9 In the snow before me a path glimmers 10 black-yellow and goes on beneath the trees. 11 It’s evening, and the air is heavy 12 And damp with colors. 13 14 The trees beneath which I walk 15 have branches like children’s hands; 16 they plead without end, 17 ineffably kind, when I stand still. 18 19 Distant gardens and hedges 20 burn in a dark mess, 21 and the glowing sky, rigid with fear, 22 sees how the children’s hands are reaching. 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34